


Solemn Reminders

by liberatingparis



Category: Ghosts (TV 2019)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Love Letters, M/M, Post-War, Self-Esteem Issues, Unrequited Love, World War II
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-28
Updated: 2019-07-31
Packaged: 2020-03-09 22:55:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18926653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liberatingparis/pseuds/liberatingparis
Summary: "Oh," Kitty murmured, lips pressed into a firm line, "so you heard all of that."The Captain swayed to and fro on the heels of his shoes, hands behind back as he rubbed them anxiously around his swagger stick. "Yes," he nodded, eyes focused on something else entirely, "I'm afraid so."ORThe Captain has self-worth issues aplenty, and dealing with the events of 'Getting Out' and beyond proves difficult alone.





	1. Chapter I: A Bottomless Pit

He knew his unit had developed the tendency to squirm around him, spouting nonsense about him when it was believed he was out of earshot. How they would joke about in hushed voices, sitting loosely on their crates and digging into meals of canned corned beef to order about some dinner time chatter. And in turn, as a response to this behaviour, the Captain developed the tendency to not care. _You’re a high-ranking officer in the middle of war,_ he’d thought to himself on multiple occasions, _pull yourself together lad_. And, he reminded himself with a swift nod, a solid portion of them are just breeching into adulthood. It wasn’t as if they knew any better, they needed to be disciplined.

Maybe he did care, maybe standing nears his quarters to reconsider battle strategies when he was privy of their innermost thoughts about him did he let it prod at his heartstrings. He brushed it off, of course. _You’re an old man_ , he swore to himself, _you’re getting along. Not once have you shown such feelings and you’re not about to start due to a bunch of kids spouting harmless phrases._  
  
“I mustn’t begin to let my guard down now,” he decided, hand in hand with a fellow soldier.  
  
“Benjamin, my love,” the other had begun, careful about his actions as he tentatively reached to cusp his face, “you’ve repressed every emotion known on God’s green earth. You must let yourself breathe.”  
  
“Not now,” he started, removing the hand from his cheek and enduring the cracking of his joints as he stood, “we’re in the middle of a war. Perhaps later, when the war is over, and we have the opportunity to settle down. Not together mind you, we’re not the slickest of thieves, but at some point we can dance. Turn up the radio and-“ He trailed off, finishing his wants and needs with an uncomfortable cough. The other, eyes filled with the yearning to do more and say more in a time of need for the Captain, trekked to the curtain for an exit. He’d pressed his hand against it, before looking back in consideration.  
  
“Do tell, Mathews, how come you have let those chaps best you?”  
  
The Captain offered a smile. “Let’s just say, it’s a solemn reminder of my youth. I wasn’t a very popular child. Not something I like to draw back on, mind you.”  
  
“No, of course not. I won’t press any further. Save it for another rainy day, when the opportunity arises for us."   
  
The Captain spared him a subtle wink, fuddling with his swagger stick that he held firmly in front of himself. He would not harp on about the misfortunes of his childhood, he nodded to himself decidedly, but their behaviour was a question of his authority. And that, after all his teachings from his father, was something he would not allow. He moved with great haste out of the tent to catch the chef shouting  _"Any more for any more? Any more for any more!"._ After the last troop had gathered their meal together, he took the pleasure in standing before them.   
  
"Stand to, my good men. May I remind you that we are in the middle of war, so you can save your mocking words of my leadership and character till we are done. I was bosching jerry before your numbers were dry, keep that in mind. If you have any problems with my strategies, you will bring that up with me. I will not have my authority or character undermined."  
  
"You're alright, just a bit of a twit really."  
  
"Ah," he began, catching the offhanded comment, "Not a muscle out of place. Repeat what I just said."  
"What? No. I wasn't-"  
"Repeat what I just said."  
"Why, I wasn't un-"  
"Repeat it.  
"Sir-"  
"Repeat."  
" _I will not have my authority or character undermined._ There, you 'appy?"  
"To your posts," He ordered, clearing the air, only to lean forward in secrecy at the out-of-line soldier to reply, "very much so."  
  
Truthfully, however, he wasn't.   
  
Issues of self-worth festered like a bottomless pit in his mind and anxiety bloomed within him. And, over 70 years later, nothing had changed. He'd assumed the position of leader amongst the ragtag bunch not long after he had finally come to terms with being, for a lack of better phrase, dead. His leadership had been challenged with the introduction of the MP Julian Fawcett, but he had assured himself - at the very least - that it would not happen again. Until now, at least, until now. His thoughtful march down the stairs, swagger stick at his side, was interrupted at the scheming of his fellow ghosts.  
  
"We need to think of a plan," Pat sputtered out, pressing his lips into a firm line. The organisation of the plot to keep Alison and Michael firmly in Button House was anything but planned out, and wouldn't be as such - especially not effectively - with the humorous discussions about him being designated to the forefront of the conversation.  
  
"Oh," Mary started with a pointed finger and a knowing smile, "he sounds like the Captain."  
"Yes he does! He does sound like the Captain," Julian nodded in agreement.   
  
This discussion wasn't so bad, he reassured himself as he confronted the doorway of which keep him at a distance from the others, perhaps they were just admiring his keenness to be authoritative or complimenting him by comparing Pat to himself. Pat was a good man after all. But, at the involvement of the barbaric caveman, he moved the swagger stick to be held horizontally in front of him as he twiddled his thumbs across it while shifting his jaw from side to side. 

"No no," Robin said in a gruff voice, assured, "Captain be more like 'fall in! attention!'"  
  
Illiterate fool, he decided with the squint of his eyes, surely it was only the caveman who thought such a thing.   
  
"Right pipe down everyone!" Thomas interrupted, mimicking his voice (terribly, might he add), "I've had quite enough of me being a smelly old walrus."   
"I'm going to boss everybody about and never think of anything myself!"  
  
It was at Kitty's involvement when he nodded to himself, turning on his heel to find an area of quite to wallow in self-pity. Katherine, who he saw almost as a daughter - the naïve child with a bubbly personality whom he felt he had a duty to protect. Such a duty he had assigned himself upon the realisation that this bunch of misfits would be stuck with him forever, and upon the realisation that the idea of such didn't sound so bad. It wasn't something he opposed; his unit, almost. A forced family. But the words stung, he realised, no matter how much he disputed that fact. It made him think of his squadron during the war, harmless phrases being thrown about and only the soft words of a secret lover, who he never got to say goodbye to, to comfort him. It made him draw back on his childhood, countless teachings from his father ready to assert him as the dominant male in the household at his passing only proved to show him as not a very popular figure in whichever educational institution he passed through.  
  
And how the aforementioned teachings of his father only forced him to repress anything that wasn't deemed as 'manly' by society. So when he found himself with tears almost pricking at his eyes, he made the comfortable decision to move elsewhere. Assert the solid family dynamic that he yearned for and his authority there amongst, the Captain had come to realise, amongst the ghosts of the boiler room.   
  
"I mean, sure," one woman started, drawing her shawl closer and face etched with blisters, buboes, and welts, "we do fall out from time to time. But it's never lasted longer than 20, 25 years."  
  
Anxiety riddled deep within the Captain. He mustn't let a few silly phrases define him, no matter how much it pained him as a result of his upbringing, and instead he must use the given time period - he couldn't imagine losing this forced family now, not even for a few days, never mind 20 to 25 years - he decided, as inspiration to better the situations that his fellow ghosts and dear Michael and Alison had found themselves in. 


	2. Sunshine in a Thunderstorm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> guess who's back, back again  
> katie's back, tell a friend
> 
> summaries so far:  
> chapter 1: this man is lonely and anxious and needs to take charge  
> chapter 2: this man Hates Noises and is Gay and Anxious (dialogue heavy btw)
> 
> this story is a mess i dont know what im doing 
> 
> tw: brief mention of child abuse at the beginning (early traditional punishments in school and at home), bomb/gun/war ment,

Benjamin was practically vibrating with excitement as he stepped in to the schoolyard, satchel draped over his shoulder as he tapped his fingers on the dark brown surface and bounced on the balls of his feet. His father had taught him with a stern look on his face, a pointed finger, and a cane held firmly behind him of the tendency to fidget and speak out of turn in the classroom and how to dismiss it otherwise it would result in punishment not only from the teacher but from his father himself.  But when Benjamin found himself in the classroom scratching at his ears as the chalk scraped across the blackboard as the teacher wrote his name, he didn't know what to do with himself. 

He still hated the noise years later, and looking back on the sound as an ex-military leader made him grimace. High-pitched, almost whistle-like. It reminded him of the high-pitched whistle of a bomb dropping near his feet and how he made it out of the situation in a fetal position and the soil of the trenches plastering his sweat-ridden face when he first experienced the horrors of war at the age of 19 (it wasn't as if Benjamin had much of a say in whether he experienced this or not, but signing up saw it as a chance to prove himself worthy to class peers and family, his father especially).

There were noises aplenty that Benjamin grew to hate following the Great War. The screech of chalk on a board reminding him of bombs falling, loud popping sounds reminding him of guns, but he hated nothing more - especially following the unexpected second war - than the simple thunderous claps of a storm. Following the situation regarding Michael and Alison and having managed to keep them firmly rooted in Button House, the Captain found himself alone in the upstairs room, the bright glare of the television as  _FRIENDS_ played swallowing his face but the show was merely drowned out as thunder roared overhead. Mouth kept shut, he swung his jaw in anxiety to stop himself from audibly gulping. Hands twisted around his swagger stick and feet were stuck firmly to the wooden floorboards below him. He kept his posture uptight as he sat on the sunken seats of the couch and his eyes unblinking until he endured the clicking of his joints as he stood at the sound of a new voice in the room.

"Hello, Cap'n. Don't mind me, just heard  _FRIENDS_ playing. Everythin' alright?"   
  
The Captain coughed uncomfortably, sitting back down ( _false alarm),_ "yes, Patrick, splendid."  
  
"Well, can't have you watchin'  _FRIENDS_ on your own. Mind if I join?" Pat asked, already making himself comfortable.  
  
"Go ahead," he replied simply, biting back a petty reply of  _'I'm not the boss of you.'  
  
_"Cheers, mate."  
  
They sat in comfortable silence, Pat bouncing about, clapping and singing along to the theme and even quoting some of the characters. It didn't annoy him, however, in fact the Captain smiled at the smaller man. Petty replies and hurt aside, he revelled in having someone to distract him from the thunderous claps. But when Pat found himself dozing off, that was all he could hear.   
  
Suddenly, he was in the trench again, body plastered to the side as bodies flung around him and he barely escaped unscathed. No amount of running could help him as the edges of a second blast forced him to the ground, where he found himself lucky to have not lost any limbs but instead with a strangers hand pressed against his side and coming away with a sticky red substance from flying shrapnel. He heard the stranger uttering "Cap'n, Cap? You're okay," which left him rather perplexed. He was barely an adult, much less a Captain yet, and suddenly-  
  
Suddenly, he was back in the room. The thunder seemed to have died down, and he felt soft hands touching his arm in comfort. Dazed after the attack, he blinked a few times to ensure this was real, looking down to his left to find the understanding smile of Pat staring back at him. A sharp intake of breath after, he found himself cursing at the fact he just had an attack in front of Patrick, how his chest hurt and how his knuckles were white from gripping his swagger stick too harshly ( _he had to make sure this was real)_ , but - he realised - this was  _Patrick_ he was talking about. He wouldn't tell a soul. He was a good man.   
  
"Five things you can see."  
  
"Pardon?"  
  
"Five things you can see."  
  
"Patrick, I'm not do-"  
  
"Five things you can see."   
  
He surveyed the room, biting his cheek. "The television, the couch, the  _FRIENDS_ disc, my swagger stick and...," he pauses, staring back at Pat, "you. I see you."  
  
"Very good. Now four things you can feel," Pat queried again, turning around to face the Captain in a more comfortable position, hand still rooted on his arm.  
  
"The couch, my stick, the itchiness of my uniform and you. Again."  
  
He moved his hand hastily from the Captains arm, coughing as he continued, "three things you can hear."  
  
"The television, that...idiot pigeon, and," he coughed, glaring at Pat as the other laughed at the comment, "you."  
  
"Now two things you can smell."  
  
"Food burning. Does Alison know about that? And...cut grass. That's you, you always smell of cut grass." He bit back the end of the reply: ' _It's always you.'_  
  
"Now one thing you can ta-"  
  
"Patrick."  
  
"-ste. Oh! Rightio! Silly me. Well, that's then, eh? Good bit of grounding, did that a lot with some of the kids I had to watch over. Very good exercise-"  
  
"Patrick."  
  
"Hm?"  
  
"Thank you."  
  
"Oh," he smiled, "no problem. You okay?"  
  
"I am now, thanks to you."  
  
He hated admitting when he was not okay, never mind people witnessing such. But he began to feel comfortable in his vulnerability amongst Patrick, and the want to open up to such a kind soul with a vow of secrecy was on the tip of his tongue. His train of thought was delightfully interrupted by the other, who perked up asking what that was all about (" _I see this a lot. You don't have to tell me though, I have an idea and I'm not gonna press you for it")._  
  
"War," the Captain said, Pat nodding assured him that he got the answer he was expecting, "a lot of things nowadays seem to remind me of that."  
  
"That right? What kind of things? I want to avoid this happening again I can- I can tell the others too."  
  
"No, no, no need to bother. Its casual things that cannot be stopped, truthfully." A lie, he knew, but not too far from the truth.   
  
Pat grimaced, offering a laugh at his next comment - thought it was far from humorous. "Not as bossy as you used to be, eh?"  
  
"Well," the Captain, began, scowl now on his face, "it makes quite a difference when your authority is undermined and your sense of character is mocked."  
  
"Oh. So you heard that."  
  
He hummed to himself, swagger stick held firmly behind him as he stood. "Indeed."  
  
Patrick sounded just like Katherine. 

_("Oh," Kitty murmured, lips pressed into a firm line, "so you heard all of that."_

_The Captain swayed to and fro on the heels of his shoes, hands behind back as he rubbed them anxiously around his swagger stick. "Yes," he nodded, eyes focused on something else entirely, "I'm afraid so.")_

"I'm sorry."  
  
"Don't be. I had a discussion with the ghosts in the basement, they fall out all the time. But they mentioned, rather casually, that the longest it has ever lasted was 25 years at most, thus far."  
  
"25 years? Blimey."  
  
"I don't like having my authority undermined or my character mocked, and it's not that I  _like_ taking charge, it's that I need to take charge. That's how I pushed myself forward throughout life. I was raised to be the man of the house from a young age because my father was deathly ill, I was rather close with the teachers in school from ensuring I was in charge of group projects in order to get good grades even if I wasn't well liked and I," he paused, audibly gulping from the mere mention, "I joined the army in '14 to prove myself to the peers and family who doubted me. Had nothing to do with myself until the war of '39, and my unit undermining and mocking me-"  
  
"-struck a nerve."  
  
"Yes, if that's how you want to put it, because I had worked so hard to ensure that never happened. It felt like my work to avoid that was for nothing."  
  
"So us doing it just enforced that."  
  
"Indeed."  
  
"I see. Sorry mate, won't happen again."  
  
"I'd rather it not, but I've come to terms with it. This house," he began, "the members living under this roof remind me of my unit during the war. Forced family, almost, tight-knit, had it not been for that. Half of them didn't make it, the rest were just breaching into adulthood so I didn't bother trying to make it better between us because...they were kids. I didn't have a lot of time with them, but I've been in this house and on these grounds since '45. I've had time to come to terms with the shenanigans that occur and how much of a ragtag bunch we are because I'm never going to get rid of you lot."  
  
There was a comfortable pause between them, leaving Pat twiddling his thumbs and looking up at the Captain every few seconds in expectancy.  
  
"And frankly I wouldn't want to. But the mocking struck a nerve and the idea of falling apart for so long reminded me of losing my unit, losing my b-" the word was lost on his tongue, "and I wouldn't want that to happen again."  
  
"I getcha, you're good."  
  
"Good lord, that's enough of that for one day."  
  
"Sharing is good, mate! I had to talk about my death day to you lot 'cause I was clearly dampening the mood and it actually felt good to let it all out."  
  
"Perhaps," he said with his usual furrowed brows, before slipping into a smug smirk, "I'll test the waters, yes?"  
  
"Sounds good, mate. And uh- I know the mocking struck a nerve like but if its any consolation, when I was compared to you during that whole thing I was pleased. You're a good man to look up to Cap'n."  
  
"As are you, Patrick," he nodded, offering a firm handshake which was taken with great pleasure and excitement.   
  
They shared a smile, Pat leaving the room and bouncing on the balls of feet with the Captain in tow.  
  
"Now," he said, fixing his glasses, "lets fix things with the rest of these lot." 

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I have absolutely called the Captain 'Benjamin Laurence Mathews'. Couldn't fit Jim or Simon in there, sorry boys. also this is absolutely not going to be canon I can tell...I feel like button house may have been a training ground or hospital rather than a place of resting (post-war) for cap, but im having fun with this so who cares 
> 
> I have big exams coming up so I probably won't update this till like. june 13th, idk. updates will be spontaneous anyway. 
> 
> ANYWAY comments and kudos appreciated! you can find all my ghosts content on my twitter and insta @dammitfanny!


End file.
